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Eye-Movement Analysis in Reading Content Words and Function Words

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Eye-Movement Analysis in Reading Content Words and Function Words Eye-movement analysis in reading content words and function words Sophie Roussel1, Anne Rohr1, Eric Raufaste 2, Jean-Luc Nespoulous1 1Laboratoire Lordat – CEA.1941- IFR N°96 - Université Toulouse-II, France 2 Laboratoire Travail et Cognition – UMR5551 du CNRS - Université Toulouse-II, France Address for correspondence: Sophie Roussel - Laboratoire Lordat Université Toulouse-II Maison de la Recherche 5, Allées A. Machado, 31058 Toulouse Cedex France Email: [email protected] Tel: (+33) 561-503-594 Fax: (+33) 561-504-918 Running Head: EYE-MOVEMENTS in READING ROUSSEL EYE-MOVEMENTS in READING 1 ABSTRACT Detection task studies and studies of eye-movement in reading all pointed out a differential processing of content and function words. Several determinants were proposed: grammatical class, word configuration, word frequency, etc. Although function words are both “short” and “highly frequent”, interactions between those factors were left widely underdetermined. Hence, the present eye-movement study aimed at isolate the specific effect of grammatical class, controlling other factors, and specifically frequency and form properties (e.g. word length). Results confirm that grammatical class induces by itself different attentional patterns with more fixations on content words than on function words. When words were gazed, there were longer gaze durations and smaller pupil diameter on content words than on function words. Keywords: Reading - Eye-movements - content word – function words ROUSSEL EYE-MOVEMENTS in READING 2 When reading a text, all words are not read in a similar way. The hypothesis of a differential processing of content and function words in non-pathological persons comes from the observation of aphasic patients with agrammatism. This pathology is characterized by almost systematic omission and/or substitution of function words in production. Although these typical errors are present in agrammatic production (Kean, 1985; Menn & Obler, 1990), the important variability in performances (within task and within subject) exhibited by those patients suggests a role of factors other than genuinely linguistic or psycholinguistic ones. It has been observed that an agrammatic patient could produce function words provided that the experimenter had drawn explicitly the patient’s attention towards those function words. Hence, variability in performance might be explained by attentional strategies (Nespoulous & Dordain, 1991). In other terms, any function word that does not receive enough attention would be omitted or substituted by this patient. In non-pathological subjects, studies based on detection tasks also showed a differential processing of content and function words, the former giving fewer detection errors than the second (Corcoran, 1966; Inhoff, 1984; Healy, 1994; Moravcsik & Healy, 1995; Koriat & Greenberg, 1991, 1994; Saint-Aubin & Poirier, 1997). This effect is known as “the missing letter effect”. The processing time hypothesis, developed by Healy (1976, 1994; Moravcsik & Healy, 1995) attribute this effect to the higher frequency of use of function words. However, according to the structural account developed by Koriat and Greenberg (1991, 1994), the higher level of omission on function words would ROUSSEL EYE-MOVEMENTS in READING 3 be due to their grammatical role within the sentence. Function words would enable the reader to establish a temporary syntactic structure, which would enable accessing the meaning of text. This meaning is provided by content words. In order to demonstrate the influence of syntactic factors at the letter detection level, Saint-Aubin and Poirier (1997) compared omission rates when a word is employed either as a conjunction or as a noun. Even when the noun was as frequent as the conjunction, results showed more omissions on the conjunction. Authors interpreted these results as a specific effect of syntactic factors on the number of omissions in a letter detection task. For about twenty years, eye-movement recording enabled a better understanding of processes in subject’s reading. So, when reading a text, eye- movements may be considered as a spontaneous, direct, and measurable trace of changes in the attentional focus. According to Posner (1980), any saccade is preceded by a visual attention shift toward the desired gaze location. This hypothesis was then developed by Fisher (1986; Fisher & Breitmeyer, 1987), who suggested that gaze movements follow a series of steps: attentional disengagement from start location, displacement of attention toward the target location, and engagement of attention on the new target position. According to Morrison (1984), access to the meaning of the fixated word (n) permits an attentional shift toward the next word (n+1). For short function words, the author emphasizes that the lag between preparation of the saccade toward n+1 and its realization would suffice for the reader to access the n+1 word meaning. In such case, the saccade might be reprogrammed and n+1 skipped. ROUSSEL EYE-MOVEMENTS in READING 4 Some other works directed at the study of word recognition in peripheral vision showed that the proactive processing of a word might be primed in periphery, before gaze actually reaches it (O’Regan, 1975 ; Rayner, 1979). Finally, in an overview of twenty years of research on eye-movements in reading, Rayner concluded: "Although we can easily decouple the locus of attention and eye-location in simple discrimination tasks (Posner, 1980), in complex information processing tasks such as reading, the link between the two is probably quite tight" (1998, p. 375). A major finding of eye-movement studies is the fact that not all words are fixated. Particularly, analyses showed that non-fixated words are essentially function words (prepositions, conjunctions, articles). Even when function words are fixated, they receive fewer fixations than content words– nouns, verbs, adjectives (Rayner & McConkie, 1976 ; Rayner, 1977 ; Just & Carpenter, 1980 ; Rayner & Duffy, 1988). Thus, content words are fixated about 85% of the time, whereas function words are fixated about 35% of the time (Carpenter & Just, 1983 ; Rayner & Duffy, 1988). Besides, there are more multiple fixations (including forward and background fixations) on content words than on function words. With regard to fixation durations, function words receive shorter fixations than content words (Just & Carpenter, 1983; Rayner & Duffy, 1988). Studies that used eye-tracking data thus led their authors to postulate a differential processing of content and function words. ROUSSEL EYE-MOVEMENTS in READING 5 The very fact that a reader is able to understand a sentence without having fixated every word in it rises questions about criteria that determine fixations. Although these results emphasize a differential processing of content and function words during reading, variables other than grammatical class can affect the number and duration of fixations. Actually, variables like word length, frequency of use, expectancy, might also influence ocular patterns. Just and Carpenter (1980), who considered gaze durations (i.e., cumulated duration of all fixations made on the word, either forward or backward) observed a negative correlation between word frequency and fixation duration. More precisely, after translating word frequencies with a log function, they observed a 53ms increase in gaze duration for each log unit decrease in frequency. Inhoff (1984) reached a similar conclusion for gaze duration, but not for first fixation duration. With regard to first fixation duration, Inhoff found that frequent words receive longer fixations than less frequent words. According to the author, this would be due to the fact that lexical access and context-based word interpretation would occur simultaneously when processing high frequency words, that is, during first fixations. To the contrary, in low frequency words, first fixation durations would only reflect the time necessary for lexical access, word interpretation being made during subsequent fixations. Longer fixation durations on low frequency words would be due to returns (in order to complete processing) and then to new fixations. Low frequency words would then receive more multiple fixations than high frequency words. ROUSSEL EYE-MOVEMENTS in READING 6 Word length also influences the ocular pattern. Rayner and McConkie (1976) showed that short words (up to three letters) are less fixated, receive less multiple fixations, and shorter fixations durations than long words (six letters and more). In order to control for word form (and word length) in testing the effect of grammatical class, an efficient strategy consists in using homographic words such that at least one meaning attached to the form corresponds to a content word and one meaning corresponds to a function word. From now on, we will name "bi-class" such forms. We also name "single-class" the forms that are attached to only one class (whether function- or content-word class). An analysis of the crossed effect of grammatical class and word form led Perrier et al. (1991) to conclude to an effect of grammatical class on the number and duration of fixations. When confronting the function word and content word acceptations of a bi-class form, it was found that the content word was significantly more fixated, received more multiple fixations, and longer fixations than the corresponding function word. Despite the fact that those experiments showed an effect of frequency and length on the number and duration of fixations, none
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